[SteveWalker]

I have all the Pioneer CDG and about 60 Sound Choice. I also have a mix of CDG's from the other manufacturers. I need to bring myself more up to date and perhaps the Chartbuster Essentials 1 and 2 and Pop Hits would be a good choice for adding the more recent titles.

The equipment that I currently use includes the following:
(at the end I will list what equipment I will use for a PC based karaoke show)

1. I started out with the JVC CDG player which has the 6 pack cartridge that I used so I did not have to handle individual CDG's for protection.

2. I added the Pioneer 300+1 CD player and a lyrics decoder box that uses the optical output of the CD player. With this you don't have to handle the CDG's or the cartridges, just enter the song number into the remote control.

3. I use a Mackie 1604 mixer which is a professional quality mixer that I also use for live bands and home recording. For karaoke only, you could use the more compact Mackie CFX-12 mixer which has excellent build in effects unit.

4. I use an excellent Lexicon studio quality effects unit. Now a days you can get excellent reverbs and delay at less than $300.
Also, you can now get effects in the Mackie CFX-12 mixer which reduces the number of pieces to connect and to carry. Note that Karaoke machines usually have very cheap sounding effects and I would disable them.

5. I use the Crown Micro-Tech 1200 amplifier which drives 500 watts into a 4 ohm speaker per channel. Crown amps are the workhorse for the live touring bands and is rock solid.

6. I use the JBL SR-4738A full range speaker cabinets with 4 ohm input impedance and maximum 600 watts. It has an 18" and 10" speaker and a horn in each cabinet. Note that the amplifier when set to maximum puts out 500 watts which is less than the speaker rating. Also note that the impedance of the amplifier and speaker are matched at 4 ohm.

This is the best sounding speaker that you will ever hear used in a DJ or KJ application. The downside is that each cabinet weighs 118 lbs and fills the back of my minivan. However, this is the price for having the best sound and after your customers and singers are used to the tremendous sound quality everything else they hear out there just doesn't sound right to them! That's what I they tell me.

7. TV is 13" with only 75 ohm input. Cheap.

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Now here is the equipment that I have for a PC based karaoke show:

1. Dell Inspiron 8100 Notebook PC with 1GHz Pentium III, 512Mbytes of RAM, 48 Gbyte hard drive, Sony CD-RW drive that can play CDG's directly and also works for converting from CDG to mp3+G, Nvidia GeoForce2 Go video adapter with TwinView which allows two displays.

2. I now use the sound card output on my laptop and send it to my Mackie mixer.

3. Karaoke software would include Hoster type of karaoke player which must have a built in key changer.

4. Crown amplifier which was described above.

5. JBL speakers which were described above. Most karaoke shows use speakers on tripods which are lightweight and portable. In this case, I would recommend either the Mackie or JBL EON amplified speakers.

6. The TV could be replaced with an LCD monitor which would be connected to the monitor output on your notebook PC. My notebook has a video adapter that allows TwinView which allows the lyrics window to be placed on the external monitor and the notebook screen will display the karaoke player. If you need to connect to the venue's TV system, I recommend getting scan converter which connects between the notebook PC and the TV. If the TV system is 75 ohm, then you will need to connect an RF modulator between the scan converter and the TV system. Note that the scan converter allows the notebook screen resolution to stay the same such as 1024 x 768. If you use the TV output on the notebook, you will be forced to reduce the notebook screen resolution down to 800 x 640 and you will have problems viewing the Sonar windows.

In summary, this new setup has very few connections required so the setup time will be 10 minutes instead of 30 minutes. If you use amplified speakers, you will have only 4 pieces to carry: 2 speakers and the laptop PC.